As the film begins, Sophie has been struggling to go on without her husband, Mal , who was killed by a drunk driver eight months ago. Their daughter, Riley , usually a model student, has turned into a troubled teen, and the tenuous family dynamic has been uprooted.
Mal’s best friend Jabir , a former physicist moonlighting as a cabdriver, has a possible solution: He’s been working on a kind of time machine. Jury-rigging a maze of tubes and circuits, he’s built a particle accelerator that can direct energy — even lethal energy — toward a precise GPS coordinate at a specific moment in the past, within a range of five years or so. But would Sophie be willing to kill someone to get her husband back?Jabir’s machine works, but not without repercussions.
It’s heady stuff, and a showcase for the prolific Greer, who’s usually relegated to supporting — and often comedic — roles but here has a chance to run through a wider gamut of emotion.Still, despite a strong cast and a compelling plot, the fundamental relationship between Sophie and her husband isn’t established strongly enough for Mal’s loss to deeply resonate.
To reference yet another cultural touchstone, “Aporia” comes across like an expanded, indie-film version of “The Twilight Zone.” It’s never going to set the world on a new and unfamiliar course, but it does its job well enough.